


Month of the Ship One Shots

by Arquero



Series: Month of the Ship 2019 Fics [3]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 11:16:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arquero/pseuds/Arquero
Summary: A series of short (and sometimes slightly longer) one-shots for the Month of the Ship challenge. For everything that isn't big enough to need it's own work.Chapter 1: Jace/Ral; Challenge Keyword: Embrace





	Month of the Ship One Shots

**Author's Note:**

> This serves as my entry for Day 7: Embrace. Sorry if it's a little shorter than the rest, but I still think it's cute
> 
> As always, to check out the OG post that started the Month of the Ship and to see other participants, visit:

Jace was a planeswalker, mindmage, and master illusionist. He could conjure figments that could trick all of the senses, images so real that any who encountered one would struggle to differentiate between them and the real thing. Still, despite his prowess at tricking others, some of Jace’s most impressive illusions were the ideas he had about himself; that he didn’t need anyone else, that he wasn’t afraid, that he had successfully left his trauma in the past. It was these illusions that were less convincing, that cracked in the little hours when nightmarish dreams arrested his gentle slumber. Images of the Eldrazi hoards on Zendikar, of Emakrul and Avicyn, of Tezzeret and his mana blade, of the thousand other horrors big and small he had witnessed across the multiverse. When these dreams woke him, shaking with damp cheeks, he was forced to admit that fear still held him in its grasp, despite his great power. After he had been awake long enough to reconcile nightmare with memory, he was often forced to admit that his past trauma still plagued him. And when the shaking wouldn’t stop until a warm hand began gently stroking his back, when he couldn’t fall back asleep until he was wrapped snugly in Ral’s warm embrace, Jace had to admit that maybe he did need others after all.

* * *

Ral Zerek was a Guildmage, Planeswalker, genius inventor, he had it all. However, it was precisely that up to this point there had been no problem he cared to solve that he couldn't eventually conquer which left the Izzet Viceroy so flummoxed. Because there were some problems Izzet engineering and storm magic couldn’t fix, and for the first time, he desperately wished he could.  Ral and Beleren had met under tenuous circumstances. He could admit that the Implicit Maze hadn’t been his finest hour. But in the months following, a change had crept into their interactions. It started small, the Guildpacts muffled laughter at one of his outbursts against the Simic. Catching Beleren’s eyes as they lingered on him during forum meetings. Eventually gossiping and making fun telepathically as the Azorius or Orzhov droned on and on about this or that. Slowly, begrudgingly, he had to admit that he and Jace had become friends, and then all at once, even more.

At first it was all heat and passion, wanting need finally burst forth beyond the cage of tentative decorum. Ral pressing the midmage against a wall, an illusion hiding them as Ral’s tongue lashed out to feel the other’s and his hands groped wantonly over chest and back and more. Then things went further, Jace showing up at his lab. Clothes thrown this way and that. Ral’s smirk at Jace’s shocked gasps, enjoying the pleasure of Jace's many "firsts" with a man that the storm mage was only so happy to teach. But still, it was a physical sort of intimacy. A friend with benefits situation. It wasn’t until the first time Jace spent the night, exhausted from their endeavors and falling asleep on the cot in his lab, that Ral realized there might be more. He was startled awake by his lover shaking, caught in the throes of a nightmare. The passionate, cocky man who had won the Implicit Maze was now curled in on himself, small, sobbing, and looking more vulnerable than Ral had imagined possible. Typically, this would be where Ral would disappear from the cot, busying himself with experiments while preparing to not-so-delicately call and end to this friends-with-benefits situation. But for the first time, he lingered, wishing to disappear the fears from the man beside him rather than to disappear himself. But what was a Guildmage, Planeswalker, genius inventor to do against the ravages of the mind and a traumatic past? All his could do was hold his lover in a warm embrace, hoping that when the nightmare eventually woke him, that the mindmage would feel safe at his side.


End file.
